


Scars

by BlossomsintheMist



Series: Steve/Tony Kinktober 2017 [20]
Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Body Image, Body Worship, Comfort, Comfort Sex, Discussion of Health Issues, Discussion of Serious Injury, Discussion of Surgery, Dislike of One's Own Body, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, Gentle Sex, Hand Jobs, Health Issues, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Steve Rogers, Insecure Tony, Insecure Tony Stark, Insecurity, M/M, Medical Conditions, Mention of Medical Treatment, Scars, Self-Esteem, Self-Esteem Issues, a lot of diaogue, and a touch of, body shame, mention of serious injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 03:52:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12856164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlossomsintheMist/pseuds/BlossomsintheMist
Summary: “You do please me,” Tony protested.  “Every day.”Steve smiled at that, soft and genuine.  “Well, good,” he said.  “It’s a real pleasure to hear that, let me tell you.  But I think tonight I’d feel best if I could make love to you, just had you lay back so I could make you feel better.”Written for Day Twenty-Two of Kinktober: Scars.





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Set early in 616 canon, before Steve canonically found out Tony was Iron Man, but just assume that he found out when they got together (I realize Tony telling him is a big assumption, but it happened somehow). That makes it just a slight AU to 616 canon. There are quite a few references to Tony’s early canon heart transplant surgery.
> 
> Pretty straightforward emotional hurt/comfort (even the title is straightforward!), but I wanted to give Tony some comfort-sex loving, too, and this seemed like the perfect prompt for that. This fic is more talking and less sex than some of my others, but it still has some explicit content, so I figured it deserves the explicit sexual content warning/tag, still.

Tony squirmed as Steve traced a gentle finger down over his chest, splayed his hand out wide and warm over his belly and traced his thumb around his navel.  He didn’t mean to, not really, he just felt very, very aware of Steve’s eyes on his chest, and the scars that covered it, too.  There was a messy collection of them over his pectoral on one side, where the shrapnel had torn him up, gone into his heart, and there had been attempts to dig it out, and then the long thin scar down his middle from his heart surgery, the other scar that crossed it right across the center of his chest.  He knew how ugly they were, and when he looked up at Steve’s perfect, muscular chest, glowing with health and smooth skin, it was just—the contrast was pretty hard to ignore.

He reached up, stroked Steve’s chest himself, ran his fingers over his hard, flat, tight abs, his ribs, between his pecs where his muscles were so pillowy firm, his perfect little tight hard pink nipples already flushed and standing up from his chest. Steve’s skin was smooth and warm, like velvet, and it felt so perfect under his fingers.  He ran the backs of them up, over Steve’s pectoral, and sucked in his breath, amazed, as Steve shivered under his touch.

Steve reached down, curled his hand around Tony’s and squeezed, pulled it up to his mouth and pressed kisses along the knuckles, the backs of his fingers, and Tony felt something inside him flutter and squeeze tight at the—the pure romance of the gesture. Steve smiled at him, over his hand, and then pressed Tony’s hand to the side of his face.  Tony felt that warm feeling inside his chest spread even further under his skin, a tight swell of emotion in his throat, and stroked his hand along Steve’s cheek, along his jaw, just to see Steve’s cheeks heat slightly, his soft, almost bashful smile.

And then Steve was leaning down, hand skimming gently down over the pulse at Tony’s wrist, down over his forearm, as he pressed a soft kiss to Tony’s lips, sucking lightly at the bottom one, sliding his tongue along it before licking softly in between Tony’s lips, until finally Tony just let his eyes slide closed, let himself enjoy the soft warmth of it, the pleasure, as he kissed back.  Steve’s hand came up, ran over his hair, tangling in it, already struggling free of Tony’s product and curling messily into his hand as Steve tugged on it gently.

They must have kissed for a long time; Tony felt lightheaded, warm and relaxed with it, almost fuzzy, when Steve trailed his hand down over Tony’s neck, thumbing gently at the side of it, down over his collarbone, and brushed his fingertips over Tony’s scarred chest again, and he felt that tense anxiety buzzing at the bottom of his spine again, felt it coiling tight in his belly, sucked in his breath as his hand came up, cupped against Steve’s elbow, stroking his hand down his arm, but he couldn’t bring himself to try and pull him away, not really. It was just—it made him feel so self-conscious, to have Steve actually touching them.

It wasn’t like Steve hadn’t seen them before, or anything.  They hadn’t been doing this that long, but Steve had seen them their first time, even; Tony had felt his eyes on them when he pulled off his shirt, painfully aware of how his chest looked in comparison to Steve’s perfect expanse of muscle and smooth, warm skin.  Steve hadn’t said anything about it then (thank God, because if Steve had really mentioned them Tony wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to keep going; he’d been nervous enough as it was), but he’d touched them then, too, rubbing his thumb along over Tony’s pectorals, stroking a finger gently along down the scar that ran down the middle line between Tony’s pecs.  At least, maybe, Tony thought, that meant he wasn’t horrified by them, but it didn’t change how horribly self-conscious he felt whenever Steve actually touched them, all slow careful fingers, the warm pads of them rubbing over the raised, knotted tissue where Tony could barely feel a thing.

When Steve pulled away from Tony’s mouth, slowly, his breath still puffing hot and wet into that moist, soft space between their mouths, Tony felt hazy and still so warm, his mouth wet and swollen with kisses.  Steve pressed another soft kiss to his chin, then moved down, lower, pressed another one to Tony’s collarbone.

Tony tried not to, he really did, but he tensed, hissed in a breath.  Not a lot of people had touched him on his chest since he hadn’t needed the chestplate anymore.  Steve was one of the only ones.  And it still felt intense, every time, Steve’s warm hands splaying out over the skin, like he’d been sensitized to it by all the time that skin had spent covered over by hard, unforgiving metal.  The touch of Steve’s mouth felt even more intense, even more overwhelming, than the touch of his fingers, and Tony just hoped he didn’t make it too obvious, fall apart too pathetically at every touch.

“Hey,” Steve said, raising his head and smiling up at him, and Tony did his best to smile back.  It wasn’t hard, Steve’s smiles were infectious, and there he was, in front of him, all beautiful bare smooth skin and smiles and soft touches, just for Tony.  “You could stand to relax a little, Shellhead.”

Tony bit the inside of his cheek.  Had it been that obvious?  “I—I’m just a little tired,” he said, and pushed himself on both elbows.  His mouth still felt so—so slick and wet.  “Here, let me—”

“Hey, no,” Steve said, and caught his shoulder in one hand.  “That’s not what I meant.  I’m liking it like this; we can go slow and soft this time.”

“But—” Tony said, and tried another lopsided smile.  “Come on, sugar,” he said, “let me make you feel good.”

“You’re tired,” Steve said, “I know.”  His hand rubbed, kneaded gently at Tony’s shoulder.  “You spent all day out at your Long Island plant, huh?  With a shareholder meeting after that?  And then we had to suit up, because of that thing with the Fantastic Four and the alien …” he waved a hand, looked up at the sky out the window in Tony’s room as if it would give him the right words to use for the self-replicating nanobots Reed Richards had somehow managed to let be released into the city.  Luckily it hadn’t taken too long, because Tony had managed to rig up a pulse that deactivated them without damaging any other technology, but he hadn’t been willing to leave the cleanup to just anyone and had painstakingly combed the city for any sign of the damned little things.  By the time they’d got home, his head had been aching.  “Those damn machine things,” Steve said finally, laughing a little, and his fingers moved up over Tony’s shoulder, rubbed at the back of his neck, just where it hurt, and Tony couldn’t help groaning, letting his eyes slide halfway closed, pushing back into it.  Steve’s eyes softened, and he rubbed a little harder, strong fingers so good there, at the back of his neck, rubbing into the ache.  “And you had to do the most of any of us, there. Why don’t you let me just make _you_ feel good for a change, huh, mister?”

“I,” Tony said, then realized he was just about to stammer pointlessly and closed his mouth, swallowed, licked his bottom lip.  “I like making you feel good, champ,” he finally said, low and soft, making it a little throaty, a little sexy, because it was so damn true, even if tonight his muscles felt aching and heavy.  “I love doing that.  It’s not a hardship.”

“But it goes both ways,” Steve said, earnestly, and his fingers were still massaging so perfectly at the back of Tony’s neck.  “You’re always, always so damn good to me, Tony.  You think I don’t appreciate that?  But you’re tired, and tonight I’d like to push you back into this bed and make you feel good.  I’d like to make love to you.  Can you let me do that?”

Tony shifted under him a little, not sure what he meant by that.  Of course he could _let_ him, he just didn’t want to be selfish, didn’t want to make Steve do all the work.  “But,” he said, feeling thrown a little off balance.

“But what?” Steve asked. “I want to, sweetheart.”  He leaned in, pressed a soft kiss to Tony’s forehead, right against the throbbing ache, and Tony had to swallow a moan, had to work even harder to keep it back as Steve’s hand came up and his fingers massaged there gently, too, rubbing back in along his skull, against the ache. “I’d like to please you,” he murmured softly.

“You do please me,” Tony protested.  “Every day.”

Steve smiled at that, soft and genuine.  “Well, good,” he said.  “It’s a real pleasure to hear that, let me tell you.  But I think tonight I’d feel best if I could make love to you, just had you lay back so I could make you feel better.”

Tony bit his lip.  “If it’s what you want,” he said, a little uncertainly.

“It is,” Steve assured him.

“Then all right,” Tony allowed, and even though he felt a little uncertain, still a little off balance, the beaming smile Steve gave him after that, so bright and radiant Tony actually felt warm from it, was worth it.

When Steve’s fingers moved back down over his jaw (rubbing gently at the sore hinges of it until Tony moaned, couldn’t quite keep it back), over his neck, to massage at his shoulders and then run down over his scars again, Tony couldn’t help but feel more self-conscious than ever.  Steve ran his fingers back and forth over the gnarled scars on Tony’s chest, down lower to stroke down the heart surgery scar again, and the words were spilling out of Tony before he could keep them back.  “You don’t have to touch them, you know,” he said, and they felt quick and hard and fast even on his own tongue, against his own teeth.  It left him panting.  “The scars, I mean.  I—I know they’re, I mean, it’s not pretty.  You don’t have to.”  They were ugly.  He knew that. He’d known that.  He’d been so sure no one would want to—even without the added complication of the chestplate—and then there had been the surgery scars after that.

Steve just looked up at him for a moment, and his eyes were so blue, fringed by lashes that were a little more gold at the tips, and they looked somehow soft.  Tony felt hot in the face, skin crawling all over his body with shame, his stomach rocking and twisting unsteadily.  But—but he knew they were hideous, and he—he was just tired of dancing around it, that was all.

“Why wouldn’t I want to touch them?” Steve asked, finally, in a soft, even voice.  He skimmed two fingers down, from where the surgery scar started between Tony’s pecs, down over the raised harsh line of it to where it met the other scar, then rubbed there, gently, slowly, in a soft little circle, and left Tony gasping, feeling strangely overcome, his skin tight over his body, his eyes and face very hot.

“Because they’re ugly?” he asked, all twisted humor.  “I can see, you know.  I see them every damn day in the mirror.”

Steve’s face twisted, a little, unexpectedly, but then smoothed out.  He took a deep breath, rubbing his fingers lower, over where the tail end of the surgery scar disappeared.  “Aw, Tony, they’re not so bad,” he said, then smiled a little. “You just take it hard because you’re so handsome, huh?” he said.

“Uh,” Tony said, intelligently.  “What?”

“You’ve always been such a looker,” Steve said, earnestly, in the tone of someone explaining something, which he didn’t get all that often except when it came to talking about something they’d had in the thirties or forties that had mysteriously disappeared by the time he got unfrozen.  “And you’re so fit and muscular and strong.  So having these little marks,” his fingers slid up lightly over the scar again, slid softly, circling the pad of one finger again and again, over the scars on one side of Tony’s chest, “it’s harder on you.  You think it makes you ugly, because you looked so perfect before.”

“Easy for you to say,” Tony muttered.  “You got all your imperfections fixed.”  And then he could have kicked himself.  Where did he get off, honestly, saying something like that to Steve?  How insensitive could you get?

“Yeah, well, I can’t say I’d want to go back to the heart trouble from the rheumatic fever and the asthma and all the rest of it,” Steve said with a shrug.  “I wouldn’t, not a bit.”  His hand flattened out softly over Tony’s chest, warm, bleeding down through his skin like that soft warmth would reach even his heart.  “And I’m sorry you’ve had to suffer now,” he said.  “If I could share the serum with you without putting you in danger, I would.  But I don’t like to …” his lips compressed, and Tony knew he was thinking about all the other trials, the people who had gone insane, the people who had died, and everything else.  He reached up, closed his hand around Steve’s arm, stroked gently.  

“No,” he said, “no, sweetheart, I understand.  I know why you can’t.  I’ve never wanted you to, never begrudged you.  I’m sorry.  I’m tired, and a big fat jerk.”  God, he hoped Steve never, ever thought that he would want him to suffer, to, to suffer from all of that and have to fight through every moment and maybe die young, Tony couldn’t stand to think of it, would have done anything to take that burden of sickness from him, to have him whole and strong and vital and not _suffering_ , and he just hoped Steve knew that.

Steve smiled a little, quickly, and brought both hands up, cupping Tony’s face, and leaning in, kissing his lips soft and fast, then his mustache, then his forehead.  “Nah,” he said, then winked.  “At least, not that time.  It’s just important to me that you know why.  Anyway, back then my scars were all on the inside.  Do you think that would be better?  That I’d like that more?”  His fingers skimmed down gently over Tony’s chest.  “If all the damage was in here, so I never had to see it. Do you think that would make it easier for me?”

“Maybe,” Tony muttered, feeling off balance again.  “It might be nicer for you.  If you didn’t have to see it.  You know.  Be reminded of it.”  Be reminded of what a broken piece of junk his body was, of everything it had wrong with it, of the damaged goods Steve was touching every time he stroked or caressed or kissed him.  It would make _Tony_ feel better, if at least his flawed, broken parts didn’t show so obviously on the outside.

“Well,” Steve said, firmly, “it wouldn’t.  I’d still know you’d been hurt.  That there was damage, inside.”  His thumb came down, rubbed over Tony’s chest, gentle and warm, in soft smooth circles, just barely catching on the scarred skin.  “It wouldn’t be better,” he said, then.  “And I don’t mind your scars.”

And he bent his head to kiss Tony again.  When he pulled away, Tony felt breathless, tingling and warm all over, even down to his toes, and he was very aware that he was getting hard, his cock hot and needy and starting to rise up in front of him.  Steve was already hard, of course, and Tony’s every instinct told him to reach out for him, but Steve had said for him to lie back, let Steve make love to him, so he didn’t, despite the way his hands itched to stroke Steve’s chest, to curl around that hot, hard dick, how he wanted to get his mouth on the tip of Steve’s cock and suck on him, make him come that way, to slide himself over Steve and squeeze his hips against his sides and rock himself back and forth, tracing his hands over every inch of skin until Steve was gasping and moaning.

Steve, though, Steve just traced his hands, so big and warm and strong, down over Tony’s chest again, making him shiver (really, they were so warm and so powerful, yet so gentle on Tony’s skin), and then he slid down over him and kissed the soft space at the base of Tony’s throat, his collarbone, and then laid his mouth over the uppermost of the scars.

Tony gasped, sucked in his breath.  Somehow, incredibly, his eyes felt hot and wet.  He stared at the ceiling, and Steve sucked gently, softly, over the raised, twisted tissue, his mouth so warm, the feeling a strange contrast where Tony could barely feel over the scarred places and the still smooth, more sensitive skin around it.  Steve traced his tongue down, over the scar, following it softly, then pressed another kiss there, where two of them twisted together and there was a mass of raised, gnarled tissue.  “This just means you’re strong,” Steve murmured, and pressed another kiss there, softly.  Tony felt a shudder start, sweep all the way through him, heard himself gasping. “That you survived what could have killed you, that you healed.  That you made it here to me, so I could meet you, and be with you.”  Gentle fingers, rubbing against the base of his surgery scars again.  “Jeez, you know how much that means to me, Tony?” he murmured, and kissed the ugly, twisted knots of the shrapnel scars again.  Tony had to shove his hand against his mouth, take in deep, shaking breaths.

Steve didn’t stop.  He moved down, covering each of Tony’s scars with kisses, his mouth soft and wondering and worshipful, like he was touching the most beautiful parts of Tony’s body, like nothing about them disgusted him, like they weren’t even ugly at all.  Once he’d covered every one of the shrapnel scars with his mouth, he leaned down, just ghosted it over Tony’s nipple, making him gasp and squirm, then pressed it against the shrapnel scars where they intersected with the heart surgery scar, rocked his lips there gently, slide one finger softly up along it. “You scared me so bad with this,” he murmured.  “I was so afraid.  I thought you were going to die, and I, I was so.  I liked you so much, fella.  I was so infatuated with you.”

That startled Tony, and he brought his hand away from his mouth, looked down at Steve, running it back through his hair, and laughed a little, shakily.  “You were infatuated with boring old Avengers benefactor Tony Stark?” he said, disbelieving.

Steve looked up at him and it was his turn to laugh, shaking his head.  “Boring?” he said.  “Are you kidding?  I thought you were the most, the most beautiful, the most perfect person I’d ever seen.  Like an actor, from the pictures.  And you were so kind to us.  To me. You, you were so patient with me, you flirted with me, you—you opened your home to me, went out of your way to make me feel at home.  And you were so handsome, and wealthy, and so goddamn smart.  I felt like I was always falling over my own feet with you.  This stupid kid from the Lower East Side, trying to sound smart with this Fifth Avenue genius, to impress this Fortune 500 CEO. I felt like a fool, but I couldn’t take my eyes off you.  And then …” he took a breath, and it sounded a little wet in his throat, looked down, lashes fluttering, and stroked his thumb, so gently, down the heart surgery scar.  “I really thought you were going to die on us,” he mumbled, “and I felt so lost.  I didn’t even know you were Iron Man, then, and I felt—God, if I’d known I might lose Shellhead, too, it might have killed me.”

Tony had felt speechless, lost for words, during that whole little speech—it felt so unbelievable, so impossible, because _Steve_ was the one who was out of _his_ league, not the other way around, Steve who was like a medieval knight in 1940s armor, so brave and so true and so good, handsome and shining with a heart like a, a star, it shone so bright, so steadfast and straightforward that it was like every part of him would ring like a bell if you tapped it, and beautiful, too, with his blue eyes and long lashes and soft, wry, almost shy smile, his sweet full lower lip and his classically handsome bone structure, all pure lines and perfect planes.  (Steve always acted like Tony wouldn’t have found him so beautiful before the serum, so handsome, but that just wasn’t true, and Tony knew it.  He’d seen a picture of Steve before the serum, and he’d stared at it for long moments, searching out the curve of his chin, the soft fullness of his lip, the noble line of his nose and his cheekbones, and if he hadn’t looked so damn thin and sick and half-malnourished that it made Tony’s heart ache just to look at him, Tony thought he might have been even more handsome, that fire shining through all the more clearly, the sweetness in his face just visible, drawn tight over his bones, and Tony’s heart had twisted so tight just looking at him, throbbed so hot and hard in his chest.)  But when Steve’s words started to stumble, his voice twisting with emotion as he hid his eyes, he couldn’t stay quiet, managed, “I’m here, Steve, I’m here.  I didn’t die.  I wasn’t ever going to leave you,” sliding both hands up to grip his arms.

Steve took a deep, shaking breath, blew it back out.  “I know,” he said, and smiled up at Tony, giving him that brave, sweet, crooked smile now.  “And thank God for that, Shellhead.  Thank God for you.”  He leaned in, took Tony’s head in the back of his hand, firm at the nape of his neck, and kissed him, sweet and firm and ardent and deep, and Tony moaned and just arched up into it, holding Steve tightly into return as he kissed him so deeply, like a promise, and Tony tried to kiss back with just as much fervor, just as much ardor, just as much meaning, as feeling.

Steve pulled away, eventually, and they were both gasping.  He brushed the backs of his fingers over Tony’s face, looked into his eyes, and smiled at him, and Tony smiled, helplessly back.

“So you scared me,” Steve said after a moment, and ducked his head again, kissed the top of the surgery scar, and Tony sucked in his breath, squirmed under him, feeling hot and overwhelmed again.  “And I love this scar, too.  Because it means—it means they saved you.  They did the surgery and put that heart inside you and you, you were strong enough to live, to heal, and—” his voice was so low and quick, breathy, as his lips traveled down the scar, “and you’re here with me now,” he said, and he pressed a kiss to the intersection of the two scars beneath Tony’s pecs.  “Let me make you feel good,” he said again, and reached down, curled his hand gently around Tony’s cock, tugged at it softly, fingers playing over the head, as he kissed him.  He looked up at him, and his eyes were so blue.  “Let me?” he said.  “I promise you can get back to blowing my mind tomorrow night, right on schedule, Casanova.”

“Oh, please,” Tony said, but he was smiling, couldn’t help it, even as he shivered all over with the pleasure Steve was sending through his body at that, gasping on the words.  “I already said you could, you charmer.”  He smiled up at him, and he thought his eyes might feel a little wet, which—which was stupid, but maybe Steve wouldn’t notice, or would think it was from the sudden pleasure of his hand on his cock.  He reached up, curled his hands through Steve’s hair, stroked it back from his face.  “But you’ve already made me feel so good,” he said, and meant it, and if his voice came out rough and deep and husky, well—he just hoped Steve realized what he meant by it, that was all.  That he meant more than just Steve’s hand on his cock.

That for the first time, he felt like maybe his chest didn’t look so bad, and that hot horrible ache of shame didn’t start inside him when Steve looked at it, when he touched the scars.

“Mmm,” Steve said, and kissed Tony’s scars again, then down lower, on his belly, still stroking his cock, squeezing and tugging on it gently.  “We’ll call it a start.  And then I’ll get you in the bath, once I’m done with you in here, and I’ll rub the aches out of your shoulders, and you’ll sleep real nice and deep after, Tony, I promise.”

“We’ll see, tiger,” Tony said, laughing, but Steve—was, well, of course he was.  Steve was every bit as good as his word.


End file.
